


This is How

by Keraha



Category: Gossip (2000)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-15
Updated: 2005-08-15
Packaged: 2017-10-05 06:45:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keraha/pseuds/Keraha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That is what Derrick does. He walks in and says things will be done and they are. He says, You can stay at my place. I have rooms to spare. He says, I'm a patron of the arts. He says, We're friends right? / And in the end, he slaps your leg and says, This is how.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is How

Naomi's face is on the walls, magnified and expanded and painted over on glass. She is beautiful and smiles and one eye is larger than the other. She has rich girl's hands and her shirt clings beautifully to her skin. He could watch the folds move for hours.

So he lies on his back, head hanging backwards over the edge of the bed.

"Bang," he says, fingers cocked into a gun position. "Bang bang bang."

The door opens and Travis hears the sound of footsteps. Derrick walks like Derrick walks, full of confidence and clicking, heavy heels. He feels the side of the bed dip as Derrick sits.

"What? Shooting Naomi?" Derrick is amused and condescending.

Travis folds his fingers together, then rolls over onto his stomach. "Just thinking."

"Yeah?" Derrick doesn't wait for a reply. "I was thinking, wanna go to the party tonight? I hear it's going to be big." His lips twitch into a sardonic grin. Travis's fingers itch for a pen. "As big as these things get, anyway."

Travis shrugs.

"Great." Derrick slaps Travis's thigh. "Get up. Jones and I are going out at five."

That is what Derrick does. He walks in and says _things will be done_ and they are. He says, You can stay at my place. I have rooms to spare. He says, I'm a patron of the arts. He says, We're friends right?

And in the end, he slaps your leg and says _this is how_.

\--

The party is like any other party. Derrick is in his element, dispensing lies and kisses like love. Travis can watch the shape of his lips form around words and blow them gently into the ears of-- someone. Anyone. Beautiful people.

He sees beauty everywhere. The fat girl in the corner; her tanktop is too tight and the fat tucked around her armpit strains against the straps. He wants to take her aside, kiss that dimpled skin. She looks awkward, but her face lights up when a friend drops by. There is beauty everywhere, but he doesn't do anything about it. Instead, he watches as Derrick's date for the night curls her fingers around a goblet and the condensation wets her fingers. He wishes he could stop time and put it on paper.

This is why Derrick-- the whole world-- thinks he's a freak.

He taps the table and the bar tender refills his cup.

"Thanks," Travis says, giving the man a nod.

"No problem, man."

Travis drinks deep, feeling the liquid pour down his throat.

_You really aren't hungover at all, are you?_ Jones asks every time he gets piss-ass drunk.

Of course he isn't. Of course he wouldn't be. He's been drinking since he was four and his mother left the vodka on the table. His mother was always drunk or hungover or high. She would see his four-year-old crayon drawings, the one the teacher would say was beautiful, and slur out a, "Yer an artist, Trav. Like yer father." Her accent thickened when she was drunk and he loved to hear it. So he'd sit on her lap and talk to her while she was still chugging from the bottle.

Jones is by the wall, chatting with one of her girls. The one with the beautiful hair. He wonders how girls do it. Is it intentional? The way their hair curls _just like that_ over their faces or the way it is perfectly messy? Sometimes, he watches Jones do her hair in the morning, throwing some gel on it and putting on her makeup.

Putting layer over layer on her face the canvas.

But he doesn't do it to himself. He is not beautiful the way they are.

_You're nice_, Jones says. _Girls dig guys like you_.

Sincerity shows on her face, but it isn't true. Girls like guys like him, but they sleep with guys like Derrick.

Travis watches as Derrick takes the girl away to some back room or a closet or a bathroom, and she is pressing up against him, trying to get her hands under his shirt even as he's moving.

"Hey, Travis, right?" a girl slides in where Derrick's girl used to be. She is smiling and her hair is dark and her lips perfectly lined in red.

"Yeah," Travis says, ducking his head. His fingers flick over ring of condensation around the base of his cup.

"I'm in Comm with you," she says.

"Oh. Oh, yeah." He can't stop nodding and he feels like a fucking idiot. He sticks his hand out. "Yeah."

She takes it, hand perfectly smooth and dry, and he feels a moment of panic. His own palm is wet.

Fuck, he thinks.

"So you're friends with Derrick, right?"

"Yeah." Travis knows where this is going. "He's a great guy. Real rich. I room with him." And now is mouth is running away from it and his palms are getting wetter and wetter. He clutches his cup as though it is a lifeline. You can't tell sweat from condensation, right? Sweating cups and sweating hands. "He's, uh, not here right now, though. He met up someone. Not here."

She smiles at him and his heart stops, just a little bit. "I can see that."

Travis's fingers are wet in cup-sweat and he taps them nervously. Tap tap tap.

"So," he says, grabbing onto a potential conversation thread. "Goodwin, huh?"

"Yeah," she smiles again. "Hey-- you're that Jones girl's friend too, right? Is it true that she had sex with him?"

Words, Travis thinks, seeing her rapt expression. So many words and so little meaning.

"Jones? Oh no. Not at all."

"Oh."

She gives him a look like she's going to eat him alive. "I hear she rooms with you two."

God. This is going to go no where good.

"I'm sorry," Travis says, words coming so fast it sounds like babble. "I have to go." He finishes his beer then puts it down and goes away. As he stumbles through the crowd, he looks backwards and sees that she is chatting with the bartender, leaning forward and undoubtedly giving him a closeup of her tits.

You're a freak, he thinks. No wonder you can't get laid.

He finds himself a corner and watches the people around him move. Beautiful, supple limbs, intertwined and easy. And here he is, watching. He wants them all so much, but he can never reach far enough. Words are not like sketches. They can never be put away or erased. Permanent like gossip.

\--

Naomi is beautiful, but in a way like models and magazines, not like Jones. Jones is casual beautiful, tossed together in the morning and lax on the couch.

Travis stays in the loft while Derrick and Jones go out. His pencil makes heavy, frantic marks against the paper and he thinks of slick bodies pressing up against each other.

Naomi and Beau, locked in an amorous embrace. Naomi, flawless back arched, hair mostly likely flung outward in an artistic halo around her perfect face. Naomi, passed out, body limp, but still beautiful. Beau, chest heaving, hands loving. Desperate, maybe. Horny. Getting laid.

A bed, a pair of shoes. Legs peeking out from the edge of a dress. Straps falling down shoulders. Perfect curves and beautiful minds.

Just words.

But the faces peering out of his notebook, notebook lines like bars, aren't words. They look betrayed and unhappy and Derrick says, _This is how_.

Let's do it, he says. What do you mean, "if"?

You're like a piston, Derrick says.

Something is inside of him and it is growing and twisting and he fears that one day it will explode. Hammerstrike on glass and there'll be cracks superimposed. Pencil scratches and faces have mirror marks through their faces, through their eyes

Derrick says a lot of things, but they are just words. What Travis needs are certainties. Derrick lets him stay for free, gives him a place to say, tries to get him laid. Jaeger's son. Hotel boy. Whoever he is, I bet he gets laid a lot.

He is carving his pencil into the paper and he sees flakes of graphite come off his pencil.

He puts his pencil down and buries his hands in his hair.

This isn't helping at all.

Naomi passes behind him and she is beautiful in her agony. Her hair is not as bouncy as it normally is (it doesn't have _lift_) and even that doesn't make her any less beautiful. Tragedy made his face turn red and ugly when his mother died, but tragedy is not objective and blessed Naomi with an inner light.

Tap tap tap. His fingers on the notebook. The side of his hand is smeared in graphite.

Are we wrong?

He takes out his eraser and erases in broad strokes. One hand is flat against the paper, making sure it doesn't wrinkle.

Too late. The eraser catches and the paper rips under his fingers.

Naomi's mirror-shattered face is half gone, but her lips are still on the paper, looking lush and kissable.

Derrick and Naomi together would be beautiful.

He stops erasing. This could go on the wall.

\--

In the end, he puts it in his desk drawer. It's not in the chain. Wouldn't belong on the lines coming out of Jones's enormous hand.

Not unless he makes another chain, a chain of people who love her.

And he does. Love her. He loves everyone. Loves their lines.

"You're such a freak," Derrick says from the doorway.

He says it with such a mix of affection and something else that Travis just ducks his head and shrugs.

"So what do you think about this whole Naomi thing? Jones is going completely out of control. Can you believe she wants to call it off? This is our paper. This is our final project! If we don't do it, we're going to fuck ourselves up. I know Jones can't afford the grade, her parents would kill her." He doesn't look at Travis, but his words bite. "Scholarships must be hard. Trying to keep up your grade and all."

"Some of us," Travis says, using Jones' swords, "need to get a job."

"Is this going to turn into the whole rent thing again?" Derrick gives him a familiar, friendly look. "I'm serious. You can stay here. It's not like I'm not rich." He smiles. "We're friends, after all. Can't leave each out in the rain."

He walks in a slow circle around the room, hands just skimming above Naomi's skin. It looks almost obscene, seeing that hand over that face. Like porn without sex and sex without contact. "You've got a lot up here," he says. "Don't you?"

Travis lets the pictures speak for themselves.

Derrick stops, then turns to look at him. He has an edge in his gaze. How would he catch that on paper? Another sketch to join the rest of his Derrick pictures.

"You're suck a freak," Derrick says again, laughing.

Travis laughs too.

This is how.

\--

He raped Naomi in high school and now he used us to do it again, Jones says.

We're friends, right?

Just words.

What is important, he thinks, is what is certain. And if it is not certain, than what is most likely.

Derrick walking out of Naomi's apartment. Derrick and her photograph. Derrick and the words that he manipulates so finely.

What if they suspect me?

What? They're not going to suspect you. Just tell them--

Photograph in his sock drawer. Feels like betrayal, but what is betrayal but a word. A twist of the face. An opened door and "This isn't the work of a sane man, Detective."

A gun to the face, a gunshot to the chest, a door on the handle.

I raped Naomi but I didn't kill anyone.

I raped Naomi but I didn't kill anyone.

I swear to you.

Just words.

Derrick is framed perfectly by the doorway and Travis wants to reach out a hand and tilt that perfect picture. Twisted, wrong, Jones still has red on her stomach. He turns away and walks into the rain with Jones. His pens, his pencils, his sketchbooks. All with Derrick.

What am I going to do? he wants to ask Jones. I can't even pay my rent.

But her lips are pressed together; she is upset and triumphant and nothing adds up to what it should be. Derrick asks a Derrick question and Jones thinks he is a bastard. But he is (was) their friend and now they are walking together in the rain.

He throws an arm around Jones's shoulder, knowing that this is not something he would normally do, and says in her ear, "I think we need a drink I know a guy who knows a guy who is the son of Jaeger. Fucked up guy, really. Lived in a hotel for three years."

Jones smiles like she's going to cry. Her lips are a line, then they open and she is laughing and crying and saying, "You're just saying that because you know you're not going to get hungover." Her teeth are bright in the night.

Jones is crying, and Travis doesn't say anymore. He can respect a silence. After all, it can't lie.

\--

"This is how you make love," Derrick says. He kisses Naomi then coaxes her onto the bed.

"Derrick," Naomi breathes. "No, stop."

"Ssh." He takes her mouth and one hand creeps up on her thigh. He kisses away her tears and whispers, "I love you."

Travis rips the page out of his sketchbook and burns it.


End file.
